Naturalising Finance, Financialising Natives: Indigeneity, Race, and “Responsible” Agricultural Investment in Canada

• Published in: Antipode
• Main Author: Sommerville, Melanie
• Other Authors: University of British Columbia, Land Deal Politics Initiative, Social Sciences of Humanities Research Council of Canada, International Development Research Centre
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2018
• Subjects: First Nations
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/anti.12395; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2Fanti.12395; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/anti.12395; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full-xml/10.1111/anti.12395

Abstract This article examines the racialised political ecologies inscribed by financial investments in a large‐scale corporate farm engaging Indigenous peoples in the Canadian prairies. Established in 2009, One Earth Farms ( OEF ) became one of Canada's largest farms by leasing First Nations’ farmland. I argue that OEF 's early success hinged on its promise of “naturalising finance” by engaging agriculture as a purportedly more real and stable financial vehicle relative to traditional assets. Simultaneously, OEF claimed to facilitate First Nations’ participation in agriculture by integrating their land and labour with financial flows—effectively “financialising natives”. I document the specific opportunities for capital accumulation and valuation mobilised by the project's claims to be providing reparative historical redress to First Nations through investor and corporate ecological and social “responsibility”. Reflecting on colonisation and racialisation processes, I demonstrate the ways that Indigenous histories and subjectivities are mobilised and monetised in contemporary political ecological projects.